King Henrik as real as a hockey player can get

Henrik Sedin of the Vancouver Canucks poses for a portrait during the 2010 NHL Awards at the Palms Casino Resort on June 23, 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada.Photo by
Harry How

LAS VEGAS -- Everywhere you look in this city, there is the fake and the synthetic.

There's a fake Paris and a fake Venice. There are fake breasts and fake friends. People spend fake money on fake experiences. It is the American nightmare.

The NHL bought into it all on Wednesday night, staging its awards show in a universe parallel to the very real values of hockey. Snoop Dogg rapped. Travis Barker, the drummer from Blink 182, drummed. Jokes were made by a series of E-and F-list celebrities.

But juxtaposed against the artifice was the player who carted off the evening's most prestigious award; a player who is not fake, who is not manufactured and, in fact, represents the best part of his sport.

Henrik Sedin is about hockey and hockey is about Henrik Sedin and, to their everlasting credit, the voters of the Hart Trophy looked past the hype and saw the Canucks centre was the NHL's most valuable player this season.

"It's like I don't belong there," he said, holding the trophy. "There's all these great players and then there's me."

But he's there now, there with the greatest players in the history of the game and even if he has trouble believing it, he made believers out of others this season.

On Wednesday, the 29-year-old centre from Ornskoldsvik, Sweden, became the first player in the Canucks' 40-year history to win the Hart, narrowly outdistancing the more-celebrated Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby in one of the tightest races in the history of the award.

Sedin finished with 894 points and 46 first-place votes. Ovechkin finished with 834 points and 40 first-place votes. Ironically, Ovechkin had been named the recipient of the newly minted Ted Lindsay Trophy, the MVP award voted on by members of the NHLPA, earlier in the evening.

The Hart, on the other hand is voted on by members of the Professional Hockey Writers Association. Make of this what you will.

"Those players are second to none," Sedin said, referring to Crosby and Ovechkin. "I thought the Hart was going to be really, really tough. Out of the question. I thought maybe the [Lindsay]."

"It's always nice to have someone new win the trophy," said Ovechkin, who's two-year reign with the Hart ended. "It's good for the league and good for the game."

Then.

"But next year will be a different year."

This year, as things transpired, certainly represented a different year for the NHL's new king. By now, the story of the Sedins' early career struggles is part of Canucks mythology and adds depth and layers to Henrik's story. Four seasons into his career, he was struggling to hit 40 points in a season and both he and his twin brother Daniel were considered dismal failures.

The year after the NHL lockout, however, they returned as point-a-game players and there it seemed they'd play out their careers; solid first-liners but players who'd never challenge the NHL's elite.

That all changed abruptly this season when Henrik led the NHL with 112 points.

"When you talk about pursuing the goal of getting better every day, that's Hank and Danny," said Canucks coach Alain Vigneault from a family party in Quebec City. "Obviously, they're talented but it's their commitment to themselves and their team that sets them apart."

Amid all the attention, Henrik found time to laugh about himself. When asked about his acceptance speech, which was cut off in the media area, the notoriously taciturn Sedin said: "It was extremely funny. Actually, I kept it short. I didn't want to be like Duncan Keith (the Blackhawks defenceman whose rambling acceptance speech for the Norris was cut short by event organizers)."

He was also asked if he'd been in touch with his brother.

"He's probably asleep," he said. But there was also something quite profound about this award and everything it represented to Sedin.

"It's not like we came in and everything went well from Day 1," said Henrik. "We came in with maybe as big as expectations as Sid and Alex and it didn't work. We had some tough times but we stayed strong. To work as hard as we did and to see the results makes it an even greater feeling."

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